Learning To Pretend

We met at Castellane House three days later to work out the details neither of us had bothered to discuss in his office.

I'd spent most of those three days telling myself this was purely logistical. A business arrangement with a personal cover story. Nothing about it needed to feel complicated.

Julianii arrived precisely on time, which I was already starting to expect from him, and I led him into the study. It felt strange having him there, in the one room in the house that still smelled faintly like my grandmother's perfume, but there wasn't anywhere else that felt appropriate for this particular conversation.

"I've made a list," I said, sitting behind the desk and sliding a sheet of paper across to him.

He picked it up, scanning it with the same focused expression he used on contracts. "A list of rules."

"If we're going to do this, we need boundaries. Clear ones."

"Go on, then. Walk me through them."

I folded my hands on the desk. "No unnecessary touching. Whatever is required for appearances, and nothing more."

"Reasonable."

"No discussing our private relationships. If people ask about our past, we give the same answer every time, and we don't elaborate."

"Fine."

"No jealousy. If either of us is seen with someone else during this arrangement, it means nothing, and neither of us comments on it."

Something flickered across his face at that one, gone before I could name it. "Understood."

"No interfering with each other's work. Marchetti Holdings and Castellane Group remain competitors. This changes nothing about that."

"Agreed."

I hesitated slightly before the next one. "You'll need to move into Castellane House. For appearances. My family will expect us to be living together if this is going to look real."

"All right."

"Separate rooms," I added quickly, before he could assume otherwise. "There's a guest wing on the east side of the house. You'll have your own space. Completely separate from mine."

"I wouldn't have assumed otherwise."

"I'm simply being clear."

"Noted."

I moved on before he could say anything else about it. "No pretending when we're alone. Whatever we do in public stays in public. When it's just the two of us, we don't perform for each other."

"Sensible."

I slid the last line toward him, the one I'd rewritten three times before settling on the wording.

*And absolutely no falling in love.*

He looked at it for a long moment. Longer than any of the others.

"Were you planning to fall in love with me?" he asked, glancing up.

"No," I said, too quickly.

"Then this shouldn't be a difficult rule to follow."

"It's not difficult. I'm simply establishing it clearly, the same way I established the others."

He almost smiled, not quite, just enough for me to feel the corner of my composure slip slightly, which irritated me more than the smile itself.

"Understood," he said again, setting the paper down. "Shall we begin?"

"Begin what?"

"Practicing. If we're going to convince your family and half the city that this is real, we should agree on the basic details before someone asks us something we haven't discussed."

He was right, which was almost as irritating as everything else about him that evening.

"Where did we meet," I said, treating it like the opening line of a script.

"A gala. Eighteen months ago. You were arguing with a caterer about seating arrangements."

I stared at him. "How do you know that actually happened?"

"Because I was there. I watched you dismantle that poor man's entire table plan in under four minutes."

"That's not what we're supposed to say happened."

"No. But it makes for a better story than something we invent from nothing. People believe details that sound specific." He tilted his head slightly. "How long have we supposedly been seeing each other?"

"Eight months. Quietly. We wanted to keep it private given our companies compete."

"Believable." He studied me. "Why did we decide to get engaged now, so suddenly, right after your grandmother's death?"

I hesitated. That was the question I hadn't fully worked out an answer for.

"Because grief clarifies things," he said, before I could answer. "Because losing someone makes you realize you don't want to wait on the things that matter."

I blinked. "That's…. good."

"I've had practice with contracts. Knowing what sounds true matters more than what actually is." He said it evenly, but something behind his eyes shifted slightly, like the sentence had cost him more than he intended to show.

I wrote it down, and put it away without commenting on it.

"You know a great deal about how to make this sound convincing," I said instead.

"I have been competing with you for three years, Sabine. I know how you argue. I know what makes you defensive. I know you dismiss compliments almost as fast as you dismiss insults." He said it simply, without any performance behind it. "It isn't difficult to predict what you will sound like.”

I sat with that for a moment, uncomfortable in a way I couldn't identify immediately.

Because he wasn't wrong. And I realized, sitting there across from him, that I could have said something equally specific about him.

I knew he took his coffee black, no sugar, because I'd watched the way he waved off cream at every meeting we'd shared. I knew he went quiet right before making an important decision, the same stillness settling over him whether he was about to close a deal or end one. I knew he tapped his thumb once, just once, against whatever surface was nearest whenever something irritated him and he refused to let it show anywhere else.

I had never once told anyone I'd noticed any of that. I wasn't sure I would fully admit it to myself until this exact moment.

"How do you know I dismiss compliments," I said, mostly to avoid sitting with the rest of it.

"You did it twice in the meeting two weeks ago. Once when the board praised your quarterly numbers. Once when I told you your argument on the northern region was sound."

"You told me that?"

"I said it was noted."

"That's not a compliment."

"For me, it was."

I didn't have a response to that, which bothered me more than I wanted to admit.

We spent another hour going through smaller details, how we'd tell people he proposed, what I should say if someone asked about a ring, how we'd handle the first public appearance together. By the time we finished, the study had become darker, the evening light fading through the windows, and I felt oddly worn out in a way that had nothing to do with exhaustion.

"One more thing," Julianii said, standing. "If people are going to believe this, I should know how you'll react if I take your hand in public. Better to practice now than to hesitate in front of a room full of your family."

Before I could object, he reached across the desk and took my hand.

His fingers closed around mine, warm and steady, his thumb resting lightly along the side of my palm.

I didn't move.

Neither did he.

The silence stretched longer than it should have, longer than any practical demonstration required. I could feel my own pulse somewhere in my throat, which made no sense at all, given that this was nothing, given that this was rehearsal, given that I had written the rule about unnecessary touching less than an hour ago.

"That's enough," I said quietly.

He released my hand immediately.

But something in his expression had shifted, something I couldn't quite name and didn't particularly want to examine, partly because I wasn't also in the right frame of mind to do so.

"Yes," he said.

"It is.”